With the continuous development of the game industry, research in the game field is also deepening. Many interdisciplinary areas of knowledge and theory have been used to promote the development of the game industry. Business intelligence technologies have been applied to game development for game design and game optimization. However, few systematic research efforts have focused on the field of game publishing, particularly with regard to independent (indie) game publishing. In this paper, we analyse data collected from a set of interviews with small indie game developers. The results indicate that most of the indie game developers have already used business intelligence for game self-publishing, although three main challenges have been identified: first, how to conduct marketing promotion and improve the return on investment (ROI); second, how to collect game publishing data; and third, how to analyse the data in order to guide game self-publishing. Our interviews also reveal that the business model applied to a game significantly impacts the role of game analytics. The study expands and advances the research on how game analytics can be used for game publishing, particularly for indie game self-publishing. 1.
Introduction
Business intelligence (BI) has been applied to game development for game design and game optimization [1]. However, few systematic research efforts have focused on the field of game publishing, particularly with regard to independent game publishing. In essence, the field is in its infancy and the available knowledge is heavily fragmented [2]. We aim to identify and remedy the primary problems faced by indie game developers during their game publishing. This means that indie game developers have many tasks [3]; they must manage themselves. Also, as more and more mobile games appear, we see an increasing number of indie game studios. However, most indie game studios that are competent at game development lack experience of game publishing [4].
6. Conclusion and Future Research
Our research is based on interviews with different indie game studios to identify the potential research gaps for indie game publishing. Although game value chain changes make indie game self-publishing possible, how indie game developers do the game self-publishing business is still unclear. We conducted a set of interviews with indie game developers to find out the main challenges for indie game publishing. Our interview study shows that with the emergence of new game value chains, indie game developers can handle the publishing business themselves. They have already used BI technologies for game self-publishing, but there are still challenges. The main challenges include how to conduct market promotion based on ROI data analysis, how to collect useful and valuable game data, and how to analyse these data and guide their game optimization and game self-publishing process.
